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While the growing legend of Orville Peck says he's laid his hat down all over North America, it's a solid fact that Gabriola Island, British Columbia, holds a special place in the mysteriously-masked country crooner's 10-gallon heart. It's here at this coastal locale—specifically at the Noise Floor Recording Studio—where the baritone-voiced enigma cut his first two romantic, reverb-popping singles , "Big Sky" and "Dead of Night", in 2017.

The entertainment industry has always been trying to find people that possess that elusive X factor. There have been countless television reality shows about it. The one thing that everyone forgets, though, is that you can’t manufacture star power. It’s a combination of many things that are honestly pretty intangible. A wonderful example of this is local singer/songwriter Camille Brown. Camille and her band Gentle Mind haven’t been performing for very long in Vancouver but they are already turning heads.

“I have an angsty streak in me like any fella does,” says Jesse Wells, the 23-year-old frontman of Welles. The band released their debut full-length Red Trees and White Trashes, an angsty letter to rock and grunge, in June.

Matthew Swann is a rarity in the music business in this day and age. Performing under his Astral Swans moniker he crafts thoughtful, introspective songs that contain some pretty powerful themes as well as some pretty powerful hooks. With his newly released sophomore album Strange Prison, Swann has created a set of extremely personal songs that at the same time are instantly relatable to any listener. The album tackles an array of subjects such as mental health issues, trauma, the duality of people and the uniting power of art.

Jo Passed was a band that almost never happened. The project that sprung from the mind of thoughtful Vancouver-based musician Jo Hirabayashi came about after he moved away from his home in Vancouver to the cultured, and much cheaper, climate of Montreal. “I didn’t plan on coming back,” Hirabayashi explains. “I thought I was going to stay out east and create a life for myself.

Morgan Waters is just outside of Bloomington, Indiana, driving through the countryside and discussing why, after a solid year of being on the road with his band, Weaves, that they would want to jump right back into more recording and touring. “We accumulated so many great experiences on that last tour but we felt like being creative again,” he explains about the process crafting the new Weaves album Wide Open.

General maintenance is on The Sea and Cake frontman/guitarist Sam Prekop's mind when ION reaches him shortly after the Chicago outfit have wrapped a rehearsal. In part, this means the band have been tightening arrangements and locking back into the gentle, jazzy grooves they've been crafting together since the early 90s, and continue to expand upon with Any Day, their first album in six years.

Pre Nup members Josiah and Sara Jean Hughes' online presence is as prolific as it is hilarious. Of the Calgary pop-punk power couple's many highlights, a recent tweet from Sara Jean celebrating Taraji P. Henson's red carpet roasting of Ryan Seacrest was liked a whopping 86 thousand times, including co-signs from Vanity Fair and Roxane Gay.

The first time ION tries contacting Sloan's Chris Murphy for an interview about the group's new album, 12, the bassist/vocalist texts back that he's in Thunder Bay seeking out a massage therapist for some sweet relief. It's just the second day of the band's 38-date spring tour, but his body has already been giving him grief.